#ian iachimoe

[king-of-the-birds]

DAUMIER'S LAW

Paul: “I wanted to get into some minimalist music so I came to the studio and started trying to think of very simple pieces, based around the theme of injustice. .. I got intrigued by the idea of thinking ‘how few notes could I use, then?’ You start off thinking of just one note and then you embellish it a bit, trying to keep in the back of your mind to be as minimal as possible. And in the end I think I abondoned the idea of minimalism and just got into this slightly experimental music.”

Linda: “I got every book on Daumier and read all about his life and thought that it would be incredible to do a visual thing for Paul’s music. Daumier worked for a newspaper as a satirical cartoonist and went to prison a few times for his Art. A lot of his work was about injustice and it’s a theme that is so right for our times.”

Soon the two projects came together.

Geoff Dunbar: "Paul and Linda called and asked if I would like to make a film on Daumier and I said yes,”, “Before Rupert came along I had made a film on Toulouse-Lautrec so the Daumier idea was very exciting.”

“Paul did six pieces of music and they each had a title – Right, Wrong, Justice, Punishment, Payment, and Release. Then we pored through the works of Daumier, got everything that was available, and structured the story from the material. And where we had to link it we invented ‘in the style of’. We hung the story on one character, a man from one drawing by Daumier.”

The movie was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in March 1992, and won the top prize at the British Academy Of Film And Television Arts in 1993. Paul & Linda are credited as co-writers and producers of the movie.

(Daumier's Law on YT)

(x)

[franklyimissparis]

Sorry to ask, but I saw your tags on the "there's a beatles in my closet" post and was wondering if you could expand? What else was blocked because of gay stuff?

hi! basically there’s this book called “rock bottom” by geoff baker, who was paul’s publicist for many years but was fired in 2003. geoff baker basically got blacklisted in the industry after he cut ties with paul and allegedly further blacklisted after releasing the book. it’s notoriously hard to find a copy of rock bottom because its initial run was quite limited and (for unknown reasons… 👀) it never had a second run and so is basically impossible to buy - it was even taken down from the amazon kindle ebook store at some point. i’ve also heard that it was incredibly hard to get any publisher to look at the book because no one wanted to get involved out of fear of being sued.

the actual book is about a publicist who works for a controlling arsehole closeted bisexual rock star who ends up getting blackmailed with gay photos from the 70s. the rock star’s name is ian taylor (which is significant since one of paul’s pseudonyms is ian iachimoe - which apparently he asked his friends and family to address letters to in order to stand out) and the rock star’s estranged former writing partner is literally named john (but goes by jack) 😭😭 - to my limited knowledge (i.e reading the few excerpts and posts abt it on live journal) there’s nothing that suggests a relationship between those two but still wild.

obviously it’s not 100% confirmed that the book is at all about paul (geoff has said that it’s not, but also advertised that his experience in the industry helped him write it) or that paul had anything to do with killing it but i would say we can make some inferences as to what happened there tbh

[mydaroga]

In March 1966 Paul ran a competition in a little underground magazine called the Global Moon Edition of the Long Hair Times, the direct forerunner of International Times, edited by Miles and produced by John Hopkins on his own hand-cranked offset-litho machine. Paul, using his pseudonym Ian Iachimoe, offered twenty guineas for a film script:  

Ian Iachimoe, the Polish 'new wave' film director, is offering a prize of 20 guineas to anyone who can supply the missing link in the following script. The dialogue is not needed, just the idea. Here is the outline of the story:

A woman (age 35-45) is fanatical about cleanliness. She is amazingly houseproud and obsessional about getting rid of dirt. This carries over in her dress, looks, and so on.

Something happens to make her have to crawl through a great load of dirt, old dustbins and so on. Good old honest dirt. What is this something?

The story continues with the woman's mind being snapped by her experiences with dirt. She goes mad and her obsession gets even worse.

What is needed is the idea. What could have caused her to become involved with filth. (She is not forced to do it, but chooses to do it herself.)

Send all answers, as many as you like, to Ian Iachimoe, c/ o Indica Books & Gallery. 6 Mason's Yard, Duke St, St James's. London SWi. WHI 1424

This competition is for real - it seems strange but it is real.

Barry Miles, Many Years From Now

[sgt-paul]

In March 1966 Paul ran a competition in a little underground magazine called the Global Moon Edition of the Long Hair Times, the direct forerunner of International Times, edited by Miles and produced by John Hopkins on his own hand-cranked offset-litho machine. Paul, using his pseudonym Ian Iachimoe, offered twenty guineas for a film script. (…)

PAUL: The thing about cleanliness could be my mother, who was a nurse and was very hygienic. She was amazingly house proud, she was almost obsessive about getting rid of dirt. So if I was analysing it, that would be the first thing I’d go to. Twenty guineas was a lot of dough! I was very interested in making films. I used to have a few images that I stored to use if I ever did make a film. I suppose I was thinking of New Wave French directors, or New Wave Polish in this case. I remember I had an image of breaking an egg into an ashtray, a very full, very dirty ashtray. That was a shot that was always on my mind. I think it was the natural perfection of the egg breaking into the really slobby man-made mess of the all the ciggies and stuff. I was interested in the contrast. Then I had a thought about the sound of fire being very similar to the sound of applause and I wanted to do something with that. So I had a lot of unrelated ideas. I suppose it culminated in ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. That was about the nearest I got to it.

— paul mccartney: many years from now, by barry miles

↓ original ad below the cut (source) :

[showdrawn]

The Water Colors, Kvt1, and Ian Iachimoe at Space Mountain, Miami

[thecoleopterawithana]

It quickly became apparent that it made more sense to separate out Indica Bookshop from Indica Gallery. [...] In the summer of 1966, Indica Books moved to new premises at 102 Southampton Row, near the British Museum and all the Bloomsbury bookshops, allowing the gallery to take over the ground floor of the Mason's Yard property. There was room in the back of the bookshop for a gallery annexe, and one of the first shows there was of musical sculpture by the Freres Bachet, which all the Beatles attended at one time or another.

The bookshop was huge and when Miles and his old friend John Hopkins - usually known as 'Hoppy' - decided to start an underground newspaper, to be called International Times (IT), the unused basement of Indica Books seemed the ideal place for the editorial office. The paper soon ran into trouble financially and Paul suggested to Miles, 'If you interview me, then you'll be able to get advertising from record companies.' Rather than do a conventional interview, Miles just taped an afternoon's conversation at Paul's house, during which they discussed fame, spiritual matters, drugs and electronic music. It was transcribed and printed as a straightforward question and answer in the best Warholian tradition, with no introduction or summing-up. It was picked up by the underground press syndicate and reprinted all over the world, from the San Francisco Oracle and the Georgia Straight to obscure underground outfits in Sweden and Holland. 'You should go and do one with my friend George,' said Paul, and so George Harrison became the second person interviewed by IT and devoted his entire interview to discussing Hinduism and Zen. Pop stars liked the straight Q & A interview presentation because press interviews at that time were mostly paraphrase with very little direct quotation and their words were always changed to suit the purpose of the journalist. IT gave them a vehicle to state their views.

Paul was correct in thinking that interviews with musicians would enable IT to get record-company ads, but the paper was still broke and often unable to pay the printer or its staff. Paul helped out financially, and was thanked by being given a credit in the staff box under the name of 'Ian Iachimoe'. This was the 'secret' name that Paul suggested his friends use when writing to him to make their letters stand out from all the fan mail. It was the sound of his own name played backwards on a tape recorder. He even used it himself: the original manuscript of 'Paperback Writer', which was written in the form of a letter, ends with 'Yours sincerely, Ian Iachimoe'. Paul was happy to lend a hand in laying out the paper and there was one evening when Paul, together with the Beat poet Harry Fainlight, took time out before dinner to draw a half-page psychedelic ad for Indica Books in order to meet the printer's deadline the following morning. It was published in issue 16. Such were the times.

— In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

[beatlebrainiacs-blog]

Issue Number 36, Part 2

Hello and thank you for joining us for another week! We are delving into the second half of issue 36 of the Beatles Book.

Let’s start with these throwback shots of the fab four during their 1964 trip to Australia and New Zealand. (If you’ll recall, this issue of the magazine came out in July of 1966.)

The first section we’re getting into is the “Letters from Beatle People.” 

This time around we’ve chosen a letter from Margaret Redfern of Morecambe and Heysham.

Margaret asked the band’s road manager, Neil Aspinall if the Beatles minded fans asking for their autographs when they were out and about with their wives and friends.

Neil responded that the band members preferred to enjoy their nights out like regular people, because once someone asked for an autograph then a swarm of people would follow!

The first shot above is a still from the film “A Hard Day’s Night” wherein George is mistaken for a male model. The bottom shot shows Paul prepping his pretty self in the mirror!

After the letter section, we get into the “Behind the Spotlight” article. 

Editor Johnny Dean takes us back to July of 1964 (back when the first photos were taken). The fab four made quite a stir “down under,” but not everyone was happy to see them.

A crowd of teenagers in Brisbane stirred us trouble by throwing rotten eggs, old pies and large pieces of wood at the Beatles. 

Luckily for the pranksters, the police caught up with them before the thousands of rabid fans did. The boys said they just wanted to see if the band could handle it. 

Behind the scenes John apparently had some choice words to say about the young people behind the scenes.

After that another group of young men infiltrated the Beatles’ hotel in an attempt to track down the band members and cut off their hair (WAT?!). The would-be perps were caught hiding in a linen closet by a chambermaid. They said they attempted the prank to impress their girlfriends...okay...

Ringo, looking like he got caught in mid-sentence, or mid singing!

After leaving “down under,” the Beatles flew back to Liverpool to attend a charity screening of the “Hard Day’s Night” film at the Odeon.

They then did a sort of “victory tour” across their hometown.

They had a lot to celebrate in July of 1964, as their latest LP was hot, hot, hot, selling 750,000 advance copies for the single. Their movie grossed one million pounds in its first two weeks in theaters in England alone (and it cost under 250,000 pounds to make!). 

At that time, however, the band had to deal with a lot of unpleasant rumors. Chief among those rumors was that one of the members was planning to leave. Ringo was the member people most said was on his way out. Luckily for us, none of it was true!

Finally, Dean relayed that the fab four ended July of 1964 planning a 27-day, 24-city American tour for August! (Tune in next week to learn more about that!)

Oh, Paul. We always love those doe-eyes!

Next up in the magazine, we’ve got Neil’s Column. For those who might not remember, this is a column written by the Beatles’ road manager Neil Aspinall.

This time around Neil wrote out the schedule for a day of shooting the band did for television spots featuring their new songs (we’re back in 1966!) “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” 

Here is that schedule:

8:00 a.m.: The band left for EMI studios.

9:45 a.m.: The band arrived at EMI studios and went into makeup.

10:20 a.m.: The band rehearsed.

10:40 a.m.: The band played “Rain” for shots.

11:00 a.m.: They watched the playback of the “Rain” shoot.

12:05 p.m.: The band had a belated breakfast of boiled eggs and buttered toast.

12:30 p.m.: A generate broke down, delaying shooting.

1:10: The band played for “Paperback Writer” shots.

2:00: Lunch break.

3:15: The band arrived back at EMI.

3:10-6:15 p.m.: The band performed for black and white shots (the previous were shot in color) of both songs. There was a panic because the final sequence had to be complete by 6:30! They managed to finish by 6:32 p.m.

We absolutely love Ringo in this shot. This is from another promotional shoot the band did for “Paperback Writer” at a fancy, historic home. (Check out last week’s blog for more about that!)

Finally, let’s talk about the “Song of the Month” in issue 36. Surprise, surprise, it was “Paperback Writer!”

The magazine included a photo of the actual words Paul wrote for the song on the back of a photograph.

Alex’s parents bought us a really cool book called “Beatles Lyrics” by Hunter Davies that explains the back story behind the Beatles’ songs and, specifically, the lyrics. 

For “Paperback Writer,” the book explains that Paul came up with the idea for the song while driving to John’s house. Paul thought it would be interesting to write a song in the form of an actual letter. You can see he really did that with the lyrics.

(By the way, the name Ian Iachimoe, is a joke from Paul, as it’s what he said his name sounds like when played backwards.)

According to the book, an author named Peter Royston Ellis thought he was the paperback writer to whom the Beatles were referring.

The book says paperbacks became a phenomenon in Britain following World War II, so it’s likely that had some inspiration for Paul. However, Paul was mostly inspired by putting the rhythm of a letter into a song.

Fun fact: you can hear John and George singing bits of “Frere Jacques” during the song. It was also Paul’s idea to put some of that classic tune into the song!

And we end now with this shot of Ringo on the back cover of issue 36!

[trendingnewsb]

Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2oeJXQH

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[lociferous]

Got busy having too much fun to post more today 🙌Today was epic and we're so thankful to everyone involved. Here's a pic of the wholly excellent @cave.of.swimmers closing out a great night at @churchills_pub with @pocketoflollipops, @richiehellmusic, @the_state_of, Ian Iachimoe, and the whole @djwoozles / @experimentaldanceparty crew. Will post more memories tomorrow/next week. Good night! (at Churchill's Pub)

[cheapmiami]

Various shots of Unión, Wastelands, Ian Iachimoe, and Knightly from sandratz in drag.

[thegilly]

Because his room was so small, Paul's instruments and his tape recorders were kept in Peter's room, a pair of Brunel tape recorders sat on top of a chest of drawers just inside the door. These were the machines on which he devised all the backwards tapes and tape loops that feature in the later Beatles work. He discovered that his own name, when played backwards, came out as 'Ian Iachimoe' and suggested that if I ever needed to write to him I should use that name. Mail arrived by the sackload and he rarely opened much of it, and then not until months after it was delivered, so a letter addressed that way would be more noticeable. I did write a few times, but I don't know if he ever opened them because he never seemed to write letters. (The original manuscript of Paperback Writer, which is written in the form of a letter, is signed 'Ian Iachimoe'.) There was no space for records or a hi-fi in Paul's room, he kept his albums with Peter's and his singles were stacked in a wire rack on the chest of drawers on the landing at the top of the stairs.

- In the Sixties, Barry Miles

[sgt-paul]

In March 1966 Paul ran a competition in a little underground magazine called the Global Moon Edition of the Long Hair Times, the direct forerunner of International Times, edited by Miles and produced by John Hopkins on his own hand-cranked offset-litho machine. Paul, using his pseudonym Ian Iachimoe, offered twenty guineas for a film script:

Ian Iachimoe, the Polish 'new wave' film director, is offering a prize of 20 guineas to anyone who can supply the missing link in the following script. The dialogue is not needed, just the idea. Here is the outline of the story:

A woman (age 35-45) is fanatical about cleanliness. She is amazingly houseproud and obsessional about getting rid of dirt. This carries over in her dress, looks, and so on. Something happens to make her have to crawl through a great load of dirt, old dustbins and so on. Good old honest dirt. What is this something? The story continues with the woman's mind being snapped by her experiences with dirt. She goes mad and her obsession gets even worse. What is needed is the idea. What could have caused her to become involved with filth. (She is not forced to do it, but chooses to do it herself.) 

Send all answers, as many as you like, to Ian Iachimoe, c/o Indica Books & Gallery. 6 Mason's Yard, Duke St, St James's. London SWi. WHI 1424  This competition is for real - it seems strange but it is real.

PAUL: The thing about cleanliness could be my mother, who was a nurse and was very hygienic. She was amazingly house proud, she was almost obsessive about getting rid of dirt. So if I was analysing it, that would be the first thing I'd go to. Twenty guineas was a lot of dough! I was very interested in making films. I used to have a few images that I stored to use if I ever did make a film. I suppose I was thinking of New Wave French directors, or New Wave Polish in this case. I remember I had an image of breaking an egg into an ashtray, a very full, very dirty ashtray. That was a shot that was always on my mind. I think it was the natural perfection of the egg breaking into the really slobby man-made mess of the all the ciggies and stuff. I was interested in the contrast. Then I had a thought about the sound of fire being very similar to the sound of applause and I wanted to do something with that. So I had a lot of unrelated ideas. I suppose it culminated in 'Magical Mystery Tour'. That was about the nearest I got to it.

— paul mccartney: many years from now, by barry miles

[trendingnewsb]

Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

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